[Home-on-the-range] National convention summary

[Jenny Callahan]

Hello! I want to share with you all some of the news from the national convention which I attended this week. I want to encourage all of us Kansans to participate in the national and state conventions! n Kansas was one of the smallest delegations at the national convention. From the Lawrence chapter, Rob   tabor; from the Johnson County Chapter: Susie Stansel, Tom Anderson; and from the south central chapter, Tom Page, Emily Schlenker, Sophia Schlenker Serena Nichols, and myself attended the 75th national convention, which is also the diamond anniversary and the first which president Riccabonow presided. We attended several sessions prior to the general session on Wednesday. For instance, I attended the crafters division exhibit, the tactile art exhibit which I helped draw tactile art. I attended the lawyers division with Rob on Tuesday. There were many items of information and things to purchase at the exhibit hall! Ministates brought food items relevant to their state such as pistachios from New Mexico and coffee from Hawaii. There are also many vendors that were interested in learning more about how blind people use the Internet or offering different technologies that we could use in our every day life. Someone said interesting news from vendors is that target is working on a system that would allow us to enter our shopping list and then have directions to each lane so that we could shop independently this will probably happen in a couple years. Card Tronics presented a check over $1 million to the NFB as they are creating a new entity to ensure accessibility for us now and in the future. Another highlight, is that Ray gKurzweil spoke about his genius and creating a flatbed scanner and the cayenne FB reader and data processing and the future of that field. The NFL with the NFB also created a grants/scholarship to be given his name of the amount of $10,000 for other persons or entities that are developing technologies specifically that will help line people with accessibility. During convention there were many scheduled speeches which were inspiring and which people gave their story. Many people side this is the best thing about convention! Another great thing, is in the social time to catch up with old and new friends as well as to hear other people's stories and to discuss everything that we've heard throughout the day. The Kansas delegates as well as some of our friends from other states such as Iowa, – – what addition to the little television now I remember that I forgot to include Anya Averinco in the list above as she is was registered as a Maryland due to her internship in at the national center this s Anya was at dinner, and we had some guest from the Colorado Center For The Blind which is where I currently am attendi we dined at bravo! Which was just a few minutes from the hotel. The food was great! The company was grader! And, as many of you know we broke the world record with our umbrella mosaic with 2480 people!  This was almost 300 more people than the previous record. Well actually it was over 300. It was very hot and humid in Florida even at 7 o'clock in the morning!
 I feel very blessed and honored to be part of this event. I really enjoyed catching up with my Kansas friends although I really missed Jack and Diane. I'm sure we will catch up soon enough. It was a fabulous events! And I really hope they Kansas has A great convention with lots of participation and attendance from our fellow Kansas! I hope to meet with you all in November and Wichita!
Jenny Callahant  ng. ummer  ,